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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25615054">Go to the Body</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction'>stiction</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Shadowboxer [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers (IDW 2019), Transformers - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Computer Viruses, F/F, Hallucinations, Size Difference, Tactile Sexual Interfacing, Thought Warfare, technically sickfic?, the looming specter of intimacy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:14:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,701</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25615054</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t even want to rip anyone’s spark out,” Flamewar murmured. “Is this what normal mechs feel like all the time?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t know,” Shadow Striker said.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Flamewar/Shadow Striker (Transformers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Shadowboxer [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810393</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Go to the Body</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“And you’re not affected?” Slipstream asked again. </p><p>“No, sir," Shadow Striker said.</p><p>“Not at all? You’re certain of it?”</p><p>“Yes, sir."</p><p>“Hm.”</p><p>It was clear that Slipstream was suffering. She hadn’t left command for at least two full cycles, having directed their response alone since the pulse hit and took Sixshot out of commission. Shadow Striker had seen her personally haul several mechs to their habsuites. Now, even as she swayed on her feet, her pauldrons remained high and her wings only rarely twitched with fatigue. </p><p>Her resolve was as admirable as always, but Shadow Striker couldn’t help but wonder what Slipstream was seeing.</p><p>She wouldn’t have offered her assistance even if she knew. Couldn't have. Her own internal temperature readouts were dismal. She needed to recharge. Needed a full defrag. Her processor was vibrating with the effort it took to fight the virus. It had been a terrible day, and Shadow Striker did not say so lightly.</p><p>“Under better circumstances, I would dismiss you for a rest cycle. However, I need you to supervise another member of the team.”</p><p>A jolt of something dangerously close to panic cut through Shadow Striker’s daze. “Sir?”</p><p>Slipstream’s optics drifted, unfocused, toward the corner of the room. Shadow Striker turned to look. The room was empty aside from the two of them and an ancient desk, but whatever Slipstream saw there made her plating clench tight as a fist. The sharp metal ring seemed to knock her out of her thrall. She shook her head and fixed her narrowed gaze on Shadow Striker. “Flamewar is compromised. I would confine her to the medbay or the brig for her own safety if anyone down there was fit to protect her.”</p><p>“Sir?” Shadow Striker tried again, fearing that her vocalizer would fail her. “What’s wrong with her?”</p><hr/><p>“I don’t even want to rip anyone’s spark out,” Flamewar murmured. “Is this what normal mechs feel like all the time?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t know,” Shadow Striker said. She reset her optical input for the sixth time in as many kliks, but the image remained the same. </p><p>Flamewar sat at the head of her berth, leaning against the wall. </p><p>She was the size of a truck.</p><p>Her frame type was the same—Flamewar had kept the wheelarches, the unorthodox paint job, the sharp flares on her gauntlets—but where Shadow Striker would typically sit half a mechanometer taller, Flamewar now dwarfed her. </p><p>Shadow Striker forced her sensory suite through a full reset and came back online to see Flamewar, still oversized and now squinting at her.  </p><p>“Thought you weren’t glitching,” she said, suspicious.</p><p>“I’m not,” Shadow Striker lied. </p><p>“Then what’s wrong with your optics?”</p><p>“I’m tired.”</p><p>“I’m tired too,” Flamewar said, stretching her arms and legs out until her foot nudged Shadow Stirker’s hip. “Today’s been a load of slag and I don’t even wanna spar it out.” </p><p>Shadow Striker stared down at her side. It felt like a normal sized foot, even with Flamewar’s odd frame details. She held a hand over it, hesitating before she let it fall. Warm metal. Her thumb fell into the hollow tip. It reached the top of her chassis, even though she could feel that it didn't.</p><p>That was not what Shadow Striker had expected to happen when they touched. A glitch burst over her hud and throbbed in the bridges between circuit boards. </p><p>“Hellooooo!”</p><p>Shadow Striker flinched, yanking her hand back.</p><p>Flamewar leaned in, towering over her. Shadow Striker had to crane her neck to see. Another glitch shivered through her frame as she reached back and laid a hand over the straight line of her cervical joints.</p><p>“You’re real weird today,” Flamewar said. She was smiling again, just a little. “Ever since the pulse. What’d it do to you?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Shadow Striker said. She moved away when Flamewar got closer, only for her hand to slip from the edge of the berth. She crashed down on her back, lying in an awkward twist as Flamewar crawled over her. The light bars cast her vast shadow over the walls. “It didn’t affect me.”</p><p>“Okay.” </p><p>Fuzzy pleasure registered between two of her plates. Shadow Striker dragged her optics away from the broad expanse of Flamewar’s shoulders and the hot twist it put in her tanks. Flamewar was touching her chassis, running a finger down a transformation seam and coming back up with the flat of her hand. She bent her head to lick at a tense plate and didn’t even nip at the edge. Shadow Striker’s abdominal plackart tingled. </p><p>“I wanna ‘face,” Flamewar said. </p><p>“You’ll hurt me,” Shadow Striker said. She hadn’t meant to say it. Flamewar's gaze lingered on her, considering.</p><p>“I don’t think I could hurt you if I wanted to,” Flamewar said. “And I really, really don’t want to.” </p><p>As if to prove her point, she ducked her head and dragged her glossa from Shadow Striker’s hips to her shoulders. Her glossa was so wide. If she worked it into Shadow Striker’s valve, it would feel like a spike. </p><p>Shadow Striker jolted again. Pit. That wasn't… she didn't want that. At least not before the coding had started burning a hole through her helm.</p><p>Flamewar settled with her chin on Shadow Striker’s chest, looking expectant. Her frame was already overwarm, its bulk covering Shadow Striker like a blanket. </p><p>“You’re sick,” Shadow Striker said. </p><p>“I’m <em> compromised, </em>” Flamewar countered. </p><p>“Which means it’s a bad idea.” </p><p>“Says you.”</p><p>“Says Slipstream.” Shadow Striker’s determination faltered as the look on Flamewar’s face shifted, growing dazed. She looked happy, for once in a way that had nothing to do with cruelty, and soft around the optics until they dropped to Shadow Striker’s mouth. Then her optics darkened and her big hands drifted over the scratches and scrapes of the day.</p><p>“You can tell me what to do and I won’t even argue,” Flamewar murmured. She ran a thick finger under one of Shadow Striker’s wheel wells. Her frame was so warm, the firm pressure on the rubber lighting another round of charge, that it was becoming less and less reasonable to object. “A nice hard light show might even help the defrag. Burn the virus out faster.”</p><p>“Fine,” Shadow Striker said. </p><p>“Y’know, Shadow, it really gets me goin’ when you’re so <em> enthusiastic </em>,” Flamewar sighed. She spun Shadow Striker’s wheel with a flick of her wrist. </p><p>“Shut up.” </p><p>“Roger that.” Flamewar wriggled closer, either missing the hitch of Shadow Striker’s frame or not caring. “How d’you wanna do it?”</p><p>“Like this,” Shadow Striker said, before she could think better of it. Her hands finally broke free of her sides and rose to Flamewar’s hips. She managed to move just enough to slot a leg between Flamewar’s and tug her down until her frame pinned Shadow Striker to the berth. Her vents opened in a shuddering wave, dumping heat. “Like this.”</p><p>“Oh, you’re hot,” Flamewar said, sounding oddly awed as she laid her cheek on Shadow Striker’s chest and ran a hand over her gusting vents. “You’re never this hot.”</p><p>“You’re never this—” She stopped before she could say <em> big </em> , ripped that word from her vocalizer with a clenched mental fist. “— <em> cooperative </em>.”</p><p>“Aww,” Flamewar crooned. “No, baby, I can be sweet. Just gotta hit me with a high-tech bug, I guess.” She lifted her head, optics hazy with amusement and illness as her big hands slid into the dip between Shadow Striker’s hip and chest armor, and Shadow Striker’s frame arched into the touch with a noise she had never willingly made in her life. </p><p>She reached for Flamewar’s face and pulled her into a biting kiss. Flamewar exhaled hard into her mouth, moaned low enough to vibrate their soft metal, but didn’t bite back. Frustration lit Shadow Striker’s lines, had her clutching at the thin edges of Flamewar’s finials before she drew back, panting. </p><p>Flamewar followed, moved her lips over Shadow Striker’s, eager and wanting and just barely licking into her. Had she ever kissed before? If she had, it hadn’t been with Shadow Striker. From the gossip she heard around the base, Flamewar wasn’t any more inclined to gentle treatment with whoever else she fell into a berth with.</p><p>“No fair,” Flamewar mumbled when they parted. </p><p>“What?” Shadow Striker said. Flamewar’s weight had her pinned so firmly to the berth that she could hardly move, hardly vent, only rock minutely under her bulk. Her legs were spread wide to make room for Flamewar’s thigh. They’d have to call in an outside medic to put her hip joints back together if she tried to open wide enough to let Flamewar lie over her. Something different, something liquid and dangerous, ticked over in her frame. </p><p>“Getting rough when I can’t.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Shadow Striker said, and repeated it when Flamewar ducked her helm to kiss the iron-firm cables in Shadow Striker’s collar. Her helm only just fit if Shadow Striker turned away and bared her neck. “Sorry, I just—”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Flamewar whispered. “Feels good. Feels real good.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Shadow Striker clutched the wide expanse of Flamewar’s back, her shifting armor and the strong cables beneath, as Flamewar got her glossa between two struts and worked up a fresh round of charge so intense that it popped on her tongue. She finally placed the odd aching pleasure in her frame as her valve growing warm and wet. Another spark arced through her protoform and jumped to Flamewar’s mouth.</p><p>“Ow,” she breathed, pulling off and dragging her lips over the side of Shadow Striker’s helm. “You’re really there already?”</p><p>Instead of answering, Shadow Striker gripped Flamewar’s hips and rocked her down tighter. Her weight rested heavily on her thick thigh that pressed into Shadow Striker’s panel and set off another slick of lubricant. She swallowed a groan and scrambled to lock her array release.  </p><p>“You gonna open up?” Flamewar asked. "Not sure how much longer I’m gonna hold out." </p><p>“I said like this,” Shadow Striker snapped. She shoved her leg up, knocking against Flamewar’s panel as she pulled her in tight. Shaking, Flamewar slid her fingers over armor seams, too big to fit in the gaps but still somehow tripping over wires and cables on her way to pin Shadow Striker’s shoulders to the berth. </p><p>And then they were kissing again. Flamewar was a terrible kisser, Shadow Striker thought, but she was picking it up quickly, the way she did with most things aside from common sense. Maybe she’d hold on to some of that technique after the virus was purged. Shadow Striker could stand to kiss more, but it wasn’t worth getting her lips shredded every time. </p><p>Flamewar did have a well-shaped mouth. Her soft metal felt new, still receptive despite how careless she was with her frame. A few cycles of insurgency had hardly toughened her armor. Shadow Striker slid her hands back, groping her aft, and she jerked down on Shadow Striker’s thigh, the armor creaking in warning even as her sensors reported stress within usual parameters. The tensile gaps in Flamewar’s plating were wide enough for Shadow Striker’s fingers to slip beneath and play over wires already rich with a charge that fed back through the struts of her hands and arms. </p><p>“Primus,” Flamewar gasped, wriggling even closer as she pushed into Shadow Striker’s hands and then down against the crux of her legs.</p><p>Warmth and charge bloomed out from Shadow Striker’s spark then, had her clutching Flamewar closer by the backs of her thighs and venting hard under her weight. The excess energy spilling from her spark tingled and pulsed under her plating. Flamewar twitched on top of her, mouth open, hot vents passing between their lips and cooling in the air of the room.</p><p>It had been hundreds of years at least since Shadow Striker had had a purely tactile overload. It was a frivolous thing. Like spark sharing, something for young mechs and courting couples. </p><p>Her sensors were raw. Rubbed clean. Flamewar’s frame shifted, dragging hot over every spot that her armor had worn down to base jet and gathering fresh charge. Primus, the paint transfers were going to be a nightmare. </p><p>She was knocked out of the thought by the quiet click of a panel opening. For the moment still dazed with satisfaction, she had almost accepted the inevitability of it being her own before she felt the warm slick of Flamewar’s valve on her thigh.</p><p>“Flamewar,” she grunted. It came out weak, longing, and she hated it.</p><p>“You didn’t say <em> I </em> couldn’t open up,” Flamewar said. </p><p>Shadow Striker didn’t have to look to know that Flamewar’s spike had extended when her panels opened. She could feel it rub against her chassis as Flamewar’s weight shifted. With her size, it was probably big. Thick, like Flamewar’s fingers. Like her glossa. It would probably fill Shadow striker up and then some, and it would make her ache when it stretched her open, would press into every node in her valve and grind into her anterior plexus as Flamewar fragged her, held her down and took her like she was some slim aerial frame. </p><p>She wanted it, then, in a searing pulse that sent a fresh shower of glitched pixels across her hud. Her valve throbbed again and she made a helpless noise into Flamewar’s mouth. She could have it if she asked. It would be like—like—Shadow Striker seized on the rising memory string and broke it cleanly off. Her knee had tipped out, left her open. She drew her legs shut again with a frustrated growl. </p><p>“Fine,” she snapped, her jaw tense around a stab of pain in her helm. “You have no self control.”</p><p>“Nope,” Flamewar sighed, sliding unhurriedly up until her leg came free. Warmth pulsed again under Shadow Striker’s panel as Flamewar’s weight settled down against her, the look on her face just as dreamy as it had been when Shadow Striker had walked into their appalling excuse for a medical bay. </p><p><em> Burn off the virus. </em>What a load of slag. She should’ve just plugged Flamewar in to recharge and slept on the floor. </p><p>“So that’s what a tactile ‘load feels like,” Flamewar said. </p><p>“What, you’ve never bothered?”</p><p>“Mm-nn. I liked it.” Flamewar’s smile drifted askew as she leaned down. Her lips dragged down the raised rim of Shadow Striker’s sighting optic. “Which probably means it’ll bore me to death once I’m back to normal.”</p><p>Shadow Striker scoffed. “You’re ridiculous.”</p><p>She could feel the jostle of Flamewar’s laugh, and then her glossa laved over the edge of her lens. She twitched. It didn’t hurt, but the lingering charge in her systems welled uncomfortably in the reserve cell and made her vision sputter. Trust Flamewar to be a pain in the aft even when she was cooperating. </p><p>Flamewar’s lips left her optic smudged and messy and moved down the edge of her helm. </p><p>“You could still spike me if you wanted,” she murmured as she finished poking around and finally drifted back to Shadow Striker’s mouth. The words buzzed on Shadow Striker’s lips.</p><p>
  <em> I’m too small. </em>
</p><p>Shadow Striker deleted the thought, but it popped back up, twice as insistent. She twitched again when Flamewar’s glossa slid against her own, dimly surprised that it fit in her mouth. Her sensors registered the dissonance and clarity needled her brain module. There was a cold shame approaching, waiting for her capacity to feel it. Flamewar wasn’t huge, and she wasn’t going to spike Shadow Striker. Even if she did, she would probably be as good at spiking as she was at kissing. </p><p>“No,” she said finally. Her array pinged another request to release, as if to mock her decision. </p><p>Flamewar rubbed her valve across the breadth of Shadow Striker’s panel. “Suit yourself,” she said. Lubricant slicked over the seams until it was impossible to tell whether it was Flamewar’s or if Shadow Striker’s frame had given up on restraint altogether. The dark pit in her tank fell away, overtaken by heat and charge. Any chance of restraint had gone up in smoke the moment Flamewar had laid hands on her, the broad grip of her fingers like a clamp on higher processing function.</p><p>“Shut up,” Shadow Striker muttered, stretching up to bite at Flamewar’s lips. Gentler, without thinking twice about it until Flamewar whined and pushed closer. Her mouth was just as wet as her valve, Shadow Striker found as her hands slid between their frames, unable to resist the pull. </p><p>Flamewar melted into the first stroke over her valve, hands landing hard on the berth a moment too late. Pain burst through Shadow Striker’s helm, flashing and then gone, Flamewar’s forehelm rolling against hers.  </p><p>Her optics were shuttered, and she jumped and moaned when Shadow Striker ran her fingers down the length of her spike and back up around the head. Her fingers circled neatly around the width and tugged. Her processor ran the uncertain data against her own internal specs, the maximum expansion of her calipers and the disused state of her valve, all in theory to dissuade the swell and ache of her array. </p><p>It failed.</p><p>The unmodded metal of Flamewar’s spike was smooth and soft—softer, even, than her lips and the inside of her mouth. She didn’t use it much, Shadow Striker thought, that much was obvious by the way her hands clung fast to Shadow Striker’s helm, a thin keen skating up the register of her vocalizer.</p><p>“Frag,” Flamewar whispered. “Yeah.”</p><p>Shadow Striker’s grip tightened at the crash of Flamewar’s field over her frame. She hadn’t—they hadn’t—she slipped her fingers up into the heat of Flamewar’s valve and shuddered, held firm against the flare of want. </p><p>Field modulation protocols were deep-wired. Suppression and muting had become standard once it was clear that war was inevitable. Shadow Striker was aware that her coding was outdated: she felt projections slip through every so often, and every so often she caught a stray external frequency. It was a bearable burden. The Rise barely had technicians, let alone medics. Nobody that she would trust to fiddle with sensitive coding updates.</p><p>And now the uninhibited flare of Flamewar’s energy hit her square in the spark, and with it came the realization that her protocols had finally failed. She was broadcasting and receiving, sensors that had grown used to the dampened hum now sparking and feeding fresh data through the relay. A new twinge of pain shot up through her helm as something popped under her armor.</p><p>“Flamewar,” she grunted, and Flamewar only pressed her harder against the berth with her bulk and ground against her hands. </p><p>“Yeah, yes, Pit yes,” Flamewar spat. She tilted her helm and pressed her mouth to Shadow Striker’s, hard and then again, softer, the tips of her fingers digging into the scant exposed length of Shadow Striker’s neck. “Feels so good—your mouth, want your mouth on me, I—” One of her sharp dentae nicked Shadow Striker’s lip as she spoke and suddenly the kiss was wet with energon, lighting over their glossae and leaving Flamewar’s frame hitching with a heat surge. The grip on her neck tightened.</p><p>Shadow Striker raised a hand to wipe her bleeding mouth and slid it back over Flamewar’s spike. </p><p>Flamewar huffed a vent, the shape of her mouth shocked and then smug and then again falling open and slack as Shadow Striker stroked a thumb over the head of her spike and thrust three fingers to the knuckle in her valve. Satisfying. </p><p>The charge in her frame was already rising again, burning in the grind of Flamewar’s huge frame over her own and the hard grip on the base of her neck. Those hands could snap her helm off. She would flip Flamewar if she could, she thought, if her frame wasn’t trembling and starting to twinge with the cutoff of energon. </p><p>Of course she would.</p><hr/><p>Shadow Striker woke at 0530 joors to the ping of her door chime.</p><p>The standard reboot diagnostic reported a core temperature several degrees above normal. Several fuses had been blown. Her processor had suffered considerable strain. </p><p>And, though her report had neglected to mention it, she was pinned to the berth. </p><p>She glanced down and wished that she hadn’t. </p><p>The door chime went off again, and Shadow Striker slipped out from under the arm around her chassis. It wasn’t easy—Flamewar’s fingers gripped at the seams of her armor until she pried them off one by one.</p><p>She slid the door half-open and shuttered her optics against the fluorescent glare of the hallway, too slow to stop the stab of pain in her helm.</p><p>“Uh, good morning!” Bitstream chirped. </p><p>Shadow Striker braced a forearm against the doorframe, upright only enough to hide the room from view. </p><p>“Antiviral coding, hot off the press,” Bitstream continued. He did, in fact, have a box in his hand, filled with rows of small black datachips. “Slipstream said you’d need one?”</p><p>Shadow Striker ignored the chip he held out. “Two.”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“Two of them.” </p><p>“Two?” Bitstream repeated. His brow furrowed. “One should really do the trick.”</p><p>“I have a compromised team member under my watch,” Shadow Striker said. The throbbing ache at the back of her helm was spreading. The sooner she got Bitstream to leave, the sooner she could collapse back into the consequence-free darkness of recharge. “I need two chips.”</p><p>“But Slipstream said…'' Bitstream's optics tracked down her frame, his gaze lingering around her hip armor. Slipstream pushed herself upright and he jumped, meeting her optics for a nanoklik before he looked deliberately off to the side. “Uh, yes. Of course. That’s, uh… that’s fine. Here’s two.”  He shoved two chips in her hand and turned away, the box clutched close to his chest as if worried she would ask for another. “Comm me if there are any complications.”</p><p>Shadow Striker stepped back and let the door close. She left the lights off as she slid one of the chips into the upload slot beside her medical port. Coding slithered up her life cord and into her processor, rooting through her circuit boards. Her jaw twinged. Medical rewrites always left her itchy under her plating. Too much like reprogramming. </p><p>Eventually, the progress bar on her HUD blinked green and disappeared. </p><p>Shadow Striker ejected the datachip, steeled herself, and turned toward the berth. </p><p>Flamewar lay sprawled across the berthtop, arms and legs akimbo. She looked normal again. Shadow Striker amended the thought. She was the proper size for a two-wheeled alt, slight in frame and reinforced only so much as her weight class would allow.  </p><p>It wasn’t any less strange to see her there.</p><p>Shadow Striker had never seen her recharging, only offline in the mad rush between a skirmish and the medbay, her face always tight with pain. Now, if it hadn’t been for the serrated edge of her gauntlets and the glimpse of her fangs through her parted lips, she might have looked innocent. Softened. If Shadow Striker eased her awake with a hand over her valve panel, would she stir, dazed, and let herself be coaxed open? The thought of Flamewar clutching at Shadow Striker’s shoulders and urging her into another long, slow kiss burned in her processor until she shook it off. </p><p>Maybe she should call Bitstream back. Get checked to make sure the antiviral coding had worked. </p><p>The thought was stupid. </p><p>Shadow Striker sat on the edge of the berth and reached for Flamewar’s forearm. The catch to her medical port was loose from how many times the field medics had had to pry it open. So careless. It was, nevertheless, convenient at the moment. </p><p>Shadow Striker stopped there, staring down into the slot next to Flamewar’s medical port. Flamewar’s wrist fit neatly in her hand. Her vents hadn’t slid shut yet, and Shadow Striker could hear the whisper of her internal fans. The antiviral chip was heavy in her fist. </p><p>Flamewar’s fingers twitched, and the spell was broken. </p><p>Shadow Striker slid the chip home with a click. She watched the dim flicker of Flamewar’s shuttered optics as the viral coding was purged. It was for the best. Flamewar without her rage was a day without a star-rise. That aside… </p><p>Her commlink pinged with a summons. Slipstream.</p><p>Nobody like them could stay alive without fangs. </p><hr/><p>Shadow Striker pressed the access panel to Slipstream’s quarters half a joor later. </p><p>The paint transfers and dents had taken some work. There were still places where her nanites had failed to entirely repopulate, but Slipstream would hardly notice unless she had developed a sudden interest in fine-point inspections. Shadow Striker had scrubbed all the transfluid and lubricant from her frame, finally letting her panel retract in order to clear out anything that had pooled underneath, and if Bitstream knew what was good for him, he’d kept his mouth shut. It would be fine. </p><p>Slipstream was seated at her desk now, bracketed by two stacks of datapads. It was rare for her to allow work to accumulate, but the piles of incoherent mechs had undoubtedly caused more trouble in the time it had taken for Shockwave and the rest of the techs to develop an antivirus. </p><p>“Reporting in, sir,” Shadow Striker said. She stopped to stand at attention a respectable distance from Slipstream’s desk. </p><p>“At ease,” Slipstream sighed, taking a datapad from the taller stack at her right. </p><p>Shadow Striker let her pauldrons drop by a decimechanometer. Her hands rested behind her back, one wrist hanging loose in the other hand’s grip.</p><p>“Status report.”</p><p>“Flamewar is unharmed and stable. Antiviral chip administered at 0536 today.”</p><p>“Good to hear. And your status?”</p><p>“Sitrep same as previous,” Shadow Striker said, gripping her wrist harder. “Combat ready.”</p><p>“Hm,” Slipstream hummed. She scrawled a few glyphs on her datapad before she set it aside. She slid another in front of herself but didn’t move to turn it on. “Shadow Striker,” she said.</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Don’t lie to me again.”</p><p>Shadow Striker didn’t argue the point. It was the wisest choice, given the slight overbrightness of Slipstream’s optics. She had more than likely been amongst the first to receive the antivirus, but the odds of her having recharged much were slim at best. </p><p>Slipstream looked up from her datapad. Her optics ran briskly over Shadow Striker’s frame before settling back on her face. “Bitstream reported two antiviral plugs handed over at your habsuite.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Slipstream gestured for her to continue. </p><p>“I…” Shadow Striker faltered. Her fists tightened with the certainty that Slipstream, somehow, knew everything. She drew her shoulders back and met Slipstream’s optics. “At the time of our meeting, I felt competent. I was under the impression that my firewalls were appropriately reinforced, and—”</p><p>“That’s enough,” Slipstream said. “I won’t pretend not to understand your reasoning, but I need you to understand this: Pride has no place before the cause.”</p><p>Shadow Striker dug her fingertips into the joint of her wrist and thought of Flamewar sprawled across her berth. </p><p>“Understood, sir. It won’t happen again.”</p><p>Slipstream studied her again. “Good,” she said, reaching for the datapad. “Dismissed.”</p><p>There was something wrong with Shadow Striker’s frame. She left Slipstream’s quarters ready to rip her armor from her protoform. She had had pebbles jammed in seams before, the feeling irritating and unrelenting, the cause stuck firm until a medic or a thin tool was available. There were a hundred pebbles stuck under her armor now. Her hands flexed uneasily.</p><p><em> Pride </em>, she thought. Had it even been pride? </p><p>She strode across the length of the base. This early the corridors were still empty. Half the Rise was likely sleeping off the effects of the virus. </p><p>When she keyed open her habsuite, it was empty. </p><p>She held in the doorway, surprised at the lick of annoyance in her spark. The pressure under her armor grew until she made herself move. Her energy levels were dismal. Mood flux was a common side effect of a processor-altering virus, she recalled. That could explain it. </p><p>The ache subsided into a steady chill as she laid down on the berth. Each dent and nick on its surface felt like another piece of rock wedged under her armor. Shadow Striker plugged into the regulator and finally slipped into fitful recharge.</p><p>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>so this started out as a bingo two-for-one combining @ziahthefanboy's square 'processor hacking' and vee's square 'size difference (but flamewar is the big one)' but the combination of the two concepts unhinged me, and so here we are! now it's an sb fic!</p><p>thank you as always to james and harper for hitting me with that good good beta &lt;3 &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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